Friends group for Burnley and Padiham cemeteries?

Council bosses are looking into forming a Friends of the Cemetery organisation to keep the sites in good condition and protect significant graves.

It comes after it was revealed around 900 families will be asked to pay for the upkeep of their relatives' graves at the two cemeteries.

Town Hall chiefs believe the 17,000 memorials at the two sites - in Rossendale Road, Burnley, and St John's Road, Padiham - need constant management if they are not to become insecure.

And they think setting up a friends group - similar to organisations already formed for Burnley's parks - is the easiest way to maintain the cemeteries.

Cameron Collinge, Burnley Council's bereavement services manager, said: "We are hoping to set up the friends group this summer.

"We have already got friends of the parks groups and they have been successful, so this would be a way of getting people involved with the cemeteries.

"The groups have meetings and look at what could be improved, what could be done and how we run the cemeteries.

"It is a good forum for getting people interested in the cemeteries and getting aspects that people look at brought to the fore."

Members of the council's executive earlier this week agreed plans to charge families for the upkeep of their relatives' graves and said officers needed to protect important and significant memorials, such as those of former councillors and soldiers.

Coun Roger Frost said there are around "three dozen historically important memorials" at the Burnley and Padiham sites and they should be "respected".

Families will be charged between £16.54 and £120 as part of three-year maintenance programme to secure around 4,300 gravestones in the two cemeteries.

The plan follows an incident in Salford when a child was killed by an unsafe memorial in a municipal cemetery.